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Barbie and Ken,1960
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And Limp Wrist magazine is celebrating with a special two-part issue. I'm on board! I love Denise's Barbie inspired book of poems and if you haven't read it, you owe yourself that pleasure. For a taste, I give you these lines, from Sensational Barbie:
When Barbie was under
anesthesia, her whole body
replaced with smooth plastic,
she swore she heard her doctors
telling smutty jokes.
When the surgeons sliced off her nipples
to put in the silicone implants
they decided to leave the milk-outlets off
because, after this, the nerve endings
would be dead and Barbie
wouldn't be able to feel
anything anyway....
from Sensational Barbie, by Denise Duhamel
Here's an excerpt from Dustin Brookshire's editor's letter to Limp Wrist's readers along with two poems from this landmark issue, selected by Kinky's author Denise Duhamel:
Anyone that knows me knows I’m the super fan of two Ds—Dolly and Denise. I discovered and fell in love with poetry through the work of Anne Sexton, but it is the poetry of Denise Duhamel that showed me I could write the type of poems that I wanted to write. While a few high school teachers encouraged me to write poems, they taught that pop culture references don’t have a place in poetry. Denise, a queen of pop culture references, taught me otherwise. . .
Kinky is the book I recommend that shows poetry can be about anything. It’s the book I pull from when people tell me that they don't like poetry. It’s the book that (actually!) taught me something about the “Dolly rumor mill”—thanks “Barbie in Therapy, Part II” for enlightening me about the rumor that Dolly is a lesbian. It’s a book that I keep a backup copy of in case my original is damaged beyond use. Kinky is a book that I turn to again and again, and it never ceases to entertain and inspire me. . .
Kinky turns 25 today, and this milestone birthday has inspired this special issue of Limp Wrist. When I realized that the publication date of Kinky and Barbie’s birthday are only separated by eight days, I knew the universe was signaling that this special issue had to be created. I’ll be forever appreciative that Denise immediately agreed when I asked if she would co-edit this issue.
Here are two poems from the Limp Wrist Kinky issue, chosen by Denise Duhamel:
In Defense of My Mother Who Never Bought Me a Barbie Dreamhouse
by Caridad Moro-Gronlier
I was too young to understand
just how young my mother was
when she worked the nightshift
at TRW, building spacecrafts
with her hands, too young to know
how it felt to hand over the whole
of her check to my father
who gave her an allowance—
ten dollars after 40 hours,
ten dollars he’d drop into her palm
every pay day.
I understood Barbie called the shots.
That Dreamhouse was hers, Ken,
an accessory sans the authority
to tell her what to do.
I wrote thirty-one letters
to Santa that year,
but he wasn’t in charge.
My father was.
I thought I stood a chance
because Mami loved Barbie’s
mid-century mod A frame too,
how the chalet gleamed up at us
from the slick pages of the Sears catalog,
the wonder of real jalousie windows
and wall-to-wall carpets unfurled
on the kitchen table where she calculated
just how long she’d have
to lay that chalet away,
just how much she’d have to beg
to convince my father to pay.
I watched her turn the page,
no dogear to save her place.
I’d like to say I was happy
with the Barbie Dream Plane
she placed under the tree, but I blamed her.
It would take years to understand
she didn’t want me to dream of staying put,
she wanted me to dream of flying away.
Abused Barbie
by Dorianne Laux
Always wears long sleeves, scarves
to disguise her long neck, leggings
even in summer. She flinches
when anyone raises a posable arm,
shoves an opposable thumb
at the door and tells her
to get out. She drives
to the ocean’s ragged edge
with the top down, parks
near the pilings, a seagull
perched on each, the chains
between them swinging,
singing in the sea breeze.
Here she can breathe, bring
the clean salt-scrubbed air
into her hollow body, one
of the first ever made
before they went to solid
plastic to make the legs
and arms more bendable
so she could throw them up
to cover her face.
You can read all of Limp Wrist's Kinky issue here.
Find out more about Denise Duhamel here.
Read Denise's blog posts here.
-- sdl
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